Hi, mostly everything I'm reading here is over my head by miles, my kids pc has died and will not load windows xp, I get a file system error and no access to dos. So I used ubcd ran a diagnosis on (samsung) hdd and get unfixable lba errors. I cant enter dos from the disk, command line doesn't recognise C: or chkdsk /r, which elsewhere on google has apparently fixed same problem.
question is; does this mean I just need to go out and get a new hdd, or can I wipe current drive using ubcd and reinstall xp?
ow my head really hurts.
any response would be much appreciated Sarah x

I'd first try running a system repair from the Windows XP install disk, and if that fails, try to diagnose a little more if it is only a filesystem issue or a physical fault on the hdd (well, the LBA thingy makes me fear it would be the second).

If that's a physical error on the surface I'd try a low level format to try to fix it ; while if its only a filesystem one you may just delete the partition and reinstall.

_________________Hammerite Compendium of Precepts, Regimens and Rules of Conduct, Vol. 113 :A stroke of thy chisel, once made, canst be undone, but a stroke thou dost not make from fear is a worse flaw.
Be not cautious - be correct.

Take your XP CD and boot from it. Then launch Recovery Console. From the recovery console run a "chkdsk /f /r" which should fix the issue. If it does not, you'll want to do an in place upgrade (just overwrites the system files, but keeps the data) See this topic for the details:

The worst case scenerio, would be to do a low level format and then reinstall. However, it is possible to recover the data first using tools on the UBCD, or else get UBCD for WIndows which runs a version of BartPE which allows you to access the Hard Drive and copy files to a CD-Burner, or else to a USB Flash drive.

Thanks for all the advice, the low level thingy was enough for it to then actually let my xpcd do the rest, prior to that it would hang when xpcd started looking too closely at hdd.
Phew, my kid loves me again, I've got my laptop back and everyone is happy Thank-you so much x
Sarah

_________________Hammerite Compendium of Precepts, Regimens and Rules of Conduct, Vol. 113 :A stroke of thy chisel, once made, canst be undone, but a stroke thou dost not make from fear is a worse flaw.
Be not cautious - be correct.

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